Jackson on the Big Screen: The Beast Within

With the recent premier of The Help, a movie set and mostly filmed in Jackson, I thought it might be timely to start a series about Jackson’s forgotten cinema connections.

Almost thirty years ago, Jackson was the location of the filming of The Beast Within, a gory thriller set in the backwoods of the deep south.  An adaptation of the bestselling novel by Edward Levy, the movie was released in 1982 to dismal reviews.  Critics said it was “cheap and exploitive”, which is still true today.  Somehow it managed to gross over $7,000,000 at the box office, which is not too shabby for being up against E.T.  Today the film enjoys a resurgence in indie horror circles, where bad films are celebrated.

The premise of the movie is this:  A young couple in on their honeymoon in the fictional Nioba, Mississippi.  After some night-time car trouble they are separated, and the woman is attacked and taken advantage of by some sort of locust creature.  Fast forward 17 years:  The couple has raised a healthy teenage son, but he’s starting to undergo some very strange changes.    Suspecting the events of the past, they travel back to Nioba to investigate.  Here the boy finishes his gruesome transformation into a cicada monster in order to continue the cycle.  But can he be stopped?

The movie may be obscure, but check out this star-studded cast:  Ronny Cox (banjo player #2 from Deliverance),  R.G. Armstrong (the general from Predator), Boyce Holleman (MS state senator turned actor) and leading lady Bibi Besch (Captain Kirk’s mom in Wrath of Khan).  Look out Emma Stone!  I can only imagine the paparazzi circus that must have been here.

Is it worth putting this movie on your netflix cue? Tough call.  For me it’s greatest highlights are the clearly recognizable scenes around Jackson, particularly the swamps of Lefluer’s Bluffs State Park and the old train tressel (see Belhaven’s Hidden Trail).  The downside is that it’s 98 minutes of your life you can never get back.  I suppose the film is unique in that it is based on the reproductive cycle of the cicada.  It’s also the only movie I know of set in Mississippi that doesn’t depend on racial tension, though there is a slightly offensive “drunken Indian” character.  Perhaps the trailer can help you decide.

The film seems to be marketed and written around the 10 minute gruesome effects sequence of the boy turning into a cicada.  In an effort to preserve the dignity jackson obscura has after this post, I’m not going to link to it, but with a little searching you can watch it for yourself.

It’s pretty remarkable for 1982.  It’s still gross in 2011.

I’d probably go see The Help instead.

Lost Bridges of Hinds County part 2

by Jessica Russell

(continued from previous post)

Not two miles in, a wooden sign for “PIG EARS” and “HOT FISH” launched an impromptu dinner at the Family Reunion Shack, which turned out to be everything one could ever want in a rural, roadside club. There was blues in the jukebox; grease in the kitchen; pool tables on pressboard floors; and a large painting of the Last Supper.

Also on display: An impressive collection of blues album art, old photographs, and numerous signs discouraging such unruliness as dancing on pool tables, smoking at the cash register, and using profanity.

It is, after all, a family operation. The couple in charge moved to Terry from Jackson many years ago. And they can cook. The pan trout, in particular, is not to be missed: battered and seasoned to Southern-fried perfection. On Saturday nights, the menu offers pickled pig’s feet, among other specials. There’s no doubt this cloven-hoofed offering would please even the most discriminating connoisseurs of pork fat and vinegar; apparently, I’m just not one of them. At least now I know.

One weathered regular asked how we got there. We shared our tale of finding the historic bridge on Rosemary Road, and actually driving over it.

He informed us we did no such thing.
“That bridge is out,” he said. “You weren’t on that bridge.” Turns out, as impressed as we were with the Vaughn Creek bridge, the main attraction is just beyond it: A bigger, through-truss bridge that crosses the Pearl River. And it is, by all accounts, “out.” (As we would soon discover, the Rankin County approach is completely gone, but the Hinds County side is still walkable.)

With little daylight left, we drove back across Vaughn Creek in search of the other lost bridge on Rosemary Road. This time, we found it, in all its rusty, rickety glory. It was closed in 2009, after standing since the 1950s—or before, some locals say.

Whatever it’s age, it’s old enough to have its own ghost story! Legend has it that the ghost of a woman who was murdered there long ago still walks the bridge at night. We were there from dusk till nearly dark and didn’t see another soul, living or otherwise. Perhaps we were too early.

We did, however, see a beautiful view of the river, and that alone was worth the trip. But, beautiful and historic as it is, it’s unclear what will become of it. With a newer bridge just a few miles away, the city is unlikely to ever repair this one. But, by the same token, it’s just as unlikely they’ll ever tear it down.

So while it’s entirely possible that we’ll one day lose this landmark to neglect, who knows? If enough people care to preserve it, it could get a new life—say, as a great highlight on a walking or biking trail, perhaps—and bring new value to nearby communities.

If you like, grab your camera and imagine the possibilities for yourself. If you get hungry, you know where to stop!

Lost Bridges of Hinds County part 1

Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a two-part post. We will return soon with more of David McCarty’s Welcome to East Jackson.

The only thing that makes a summer day hotter is spending it in the city.  I’m told the “urban heat island effect” can raise the ambient air temperature a full 10 degrees above what out rural neighbors are experiencing.  This belief led a friend and I on a quest for adventure out-of-town.  We had heard a report of a bridge, somewhere close to Terry, that state had deemed “structurally insufficient” and later closed to traffic.  Interestingly, some time passed between these two events.

Armed with only the vaguest directions and the blower set on MAX AC, we wound through and past quant downtown Terry, under some railroad tracks, and finally onto Rosemary, a beautifully hilly and wooded road.  As the woods thickened and the road narrowed, we approached a large ravine with a strangely proportioned one-lane bridge.  To our surprise, there was nothing blocking the bridge, and after some deliberation about the “structural sufficiency” of the it, we decided to drive across.  The wooden decking creaked under the weight of our car as we crossed safely onto the other side.  According to Bridgehunter.com, this pony-truss style bridge was built in 1950, and has a sufficiency rating of 27 (out of 100!).  Apparently sufficient enough for a Toyota Camry.

Almost immediately we encountered a group of men and boys in camouflage with hunting rifles in tow.  We sheepishly asked if we could park to snap some photos of the bridge.  They consented, and we began to explore on foot.

Standing on the bridge, you have a great view of two very different water features on Vaughn Creek.  Upstream from the bridge is a slow and mysterious cypress swamp, which funnels into a fast flowing creek that spills across a sandstone slab visible on the other side of the bridge.  The sound of rushing water was so inviting that we decided to scramble down the steep poison ivy covered bank of the creek.  What we found was bittersweet.  A small waterfall (impressive by MS standards) was no more than 50 yards from the bridge.  Unfortunately, the area around the waterfall was trashed.  The drop off the bridge was far too convenient(and probably entertaining) of a place to make trash “go away”.   I was saddened as we stepped around broken TV’s, tires, and kitchen waste.  This was a reminder of my least favorite trait of my home state-littering is a hobby in MS.

We walked down the creek to its confluence with the Pearl River and enjoyed some breath-taking views of sandbars and herons until, abruptly, gunfire echoed through the woods.  Our friends from earlier must have found something.  It made for a good time to hustle back to the car.

Convinced we had found the bridge we came to see, we headed back to town.  But, as we would soon find out, the adventure on Rosemary Road was far from over.

WELCOME TO EAST JACKSON. Part I.

by David McCarty

In which we visit a Lost City long gone:  a world where bootleggers were demigods, whiskey was good as gold, and the blues ruled supreme.

Let me tell you a story about a Lost City just a few minutes from where you’re sitting right now.  A place where millions of dollars changed hands; where blood was spilled; where the legends of blues and r & b played.

To find it, head over to Hal & Mal’s, and maybe grab a glass of Southern Pecan.  Then head south down Commerce, and hang a left on Old Brandon Road.  You’ll cross the Pearl, low and brown and muddy in its summer doldrums, and then the impeccably pruned levee on your left.  You’re in Rankin County now, but you can still catch a glimpse of downtown’s skyscrapers in your rearview mirror.

Go slow; there’s speed traps sometimes, although there’s little traffic.  There’s some tumbledown shacks on your left, an old-timey gas station, and then you’re at Flowood Drive, not far from Trustmark Park and a M-Braves game.  If you bear left a bit and snake down Fannin Road you’re still only five minutes from downtown.

What you didn’t see on that stretch was an invisible city called East Jackson, the Gold Coast of Mississippi.  From the 1920s until the mid 1960s it was a haven for no-label Mason jar whisky, illegal blackjack, and the finest music in the country.  For forty years it reigned supreme as a haven for wildness and lawlessness, a miniature burst of New Orleans, complete with its own river.  East Jackson was so spectacular it earned its own theme song in 1928 by a local bluesman.

In 1919, the United States banned alcohol, and the nation was completely rid of intoxicating liquors.  Rid of them in theory: in reality, bootlegging was such a huge business that entire economies sprung up around it.  One of those was our lost city of East Jackson.  Mississippi had gone dry in 1908 and stayed dry even after the federal ban on alcohol was lifted in ’33.  We just had a little 10% tax on whisky sales, is all, even if selling whisky was technically illegal.

One thing you have to understand about Jackson is that the physical nature of the City hasn’t changed much in the years since old Louis LeFleur pitched camp on a bluff in 1821.  The downtown has hewed to the same general roads since it was laid out.  The main thing that’s changed is the Pearl River, and the role it plays in the City’s life.  One of the main reasons the City even exists is because you could navigate the Pearl to get here.  Cars have only been common for a few decades, and the highway system as we know it now is less than sixty years old.  If you wanted to travel, or wanted to move goods, you used water.

And if you wanted to sell whisky, you did it on the Pearl.  LeFleur’s Bluff was picked as the state’s new capital (over Natchez) in part because it was the most central part of the state that wasn’t a complete swamp.  By the 1920’s, you could ride that Pearl Highway right up to East Jackson to an astounding collection of juke joints, dance halls, restaurants, and gambling outfits.  There were dozens of businesses running in a completely parallel economy to the rest of Mississippi, to the rest of the United States.

 The businesses ran on bootlegged hooch, tumbling dice, and blues.  All that decline-of-empire finery was soaked in cash and spilled blood.  East Jackson wasn’t wholly outside the law but it was close, and fights and even murder were constants in the calculus of the locale.  East Jackson was considered not just bad but Wrong; a cradle of sin.  There’s a 1939 Mississippi Supreme Court murder case that talks about how one tough (convicted of stabbing a fella to death after a bar fight) had first drove across the Pearl River over to the Gold Coast to pick up a half pint of liquor, after which they drove around Jackson drinking it.  You can almost see the arched eyebrow of the justice writing the case.

In other words, it was probably the damned grandest place our grandparents and great-grandparents ever snuck off to.  It was so stellar that when Bo Carter sang about it in 1928, he murmured that “some people say that East Jackson blues ain’t sad.”

Even the blues could be happy in East Jackson.  But not for long.

Next:  The Music of the Gold Coast; the Governor Declares War on East Jackson; and the One Day That Killed a City. 

Belhaven’s Hidden Trail

In the friendly tug-of-war Jackson plays with its suburbs over residents, the suburbs have seemingly developed an unlikely edge:  networks of biking and walking trails that can actually take you from place to place.

While Jackson doesn’t officially have any commuter trails (yet), the more active and adventurous residents of Belhaven and Belhaven Heights have been using a secret trail system for years.  An abandoned rail road track, with a section of rails removed from High St all the way to the Pearl River, makes a perfect forested get away right in the city.  It is not uncommon to find dog walkers, mountain bikers, or the occasional 4-wheeler using the clear and level packed gravel trail.

While this “trail system” can be accessed in a few different places, it is most commonly accessed in Belhaven Heights on Greymont St or behind Laurel St park. After passing the Water Works Plant, the trail terminates as it approaches the Pearl River.  As the earth drops off, the rail bed remains level, supported from beneath by a system of creosote trusses.  This creates an unusual condition where you are walking in the canopy of the forest, some 25 ft above the ground. The bridge becomes impassable due to a mysterious fire that was allowed to burn a few days before Katrina struck.  While you can still get close enough to the river to catch a glimpse of the structural elegance of the old train trestle, you are no longer able to walk across onto the Rankin county side.

This section of rails traces it’s history to the now defunct Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad, which seems to have acquired it during the late 1920′s.   During it’s operation, this line was able to move people and cargo from Union, MS to Mobile, AL via Jackson.  There was a large switch yard on High St where some of the service buildings still stand.  GM&O was bought by Illinois Central, and in 1996, closed this section of rail as well as many others due to redundancy in routes.  Interestingly, a private speculator now owns the bridge, while thankfully the old rail bed is owned by The Greater Belhaven Neighborhood Foundation.

While most of the story of this piece of obscura is one of neglect (and possibly arson) there is a silver lining.  Through a community partnership between Bike Walk Mississippi, the Jackson Bike Advocates, and The Greater Belhaven Neighborhood Foundation, plans are underway to create the Museum-to-Market Trail.  This will take the existing trail to a whole new level.  In addition to making the trail official, it will be extended to allow someone to walk, bike, or rollerblade from the MS Farmers’ Market on High Street all the way to the Natural Science and Children’s Museums without ever crossing a single street!  The volunteer trail clean-up day is happening Saturday, May 7th from 9am-12.  Please come out and help make this vision a reality.

(Special thanks to James Tatum and the Central Mississippi Model Railroad Association.  This group operates a working scale model of the old GM&O line at the Ag Museum, and totally deserve to have a Obscura post of their own.  For more history and maps of the GM&O visit www.gmohs.org)

Nigeria in Jackson

(photos by Aaron Phillips)

A few years I ago, I visited a friend in Washington, D.C., and he took me to my first Ethiopian restaurant. The dining experience was so unique. Instead of eating with utensils and sitting at a table, we used a tortilla-like flat bread to scoop spicy vegetables and meat from a straw basket called a mesob. Upon my return to Jackson every other dining experience felt lackluster and boring.

Recently, I discovered Chitoes African Deli and Catering in South Jackson (1700 Terry Road) and I had an is-this-really-happening in Jackson moment. The owners, who are from Nigeria, set up shop about a year ago, adding to South Jackson’s mix of ethnic dining options (If you haven’t discovered South Jackson’s taquerias, you must).
Chitoes offers a sliding scale of food experimentation. My dining partner and I decided to split two dishes: Egusi soup with goat and fufu (out of my comfort zone) and curry chicken with coconut rice (within my comfort zone). Fufu is a basically a lump of starch that looks like mashed potatoes but has a thicker constancy. It’s pretty heavy, so I don’t recommend going for a swim afterwards. I had never had goat before and it really isn’t too crazy, just be prepared to deal with a bit of fat and bones. The sweetness of the fufu went pretty well with the goat as well as the soup and various spices. The curry chicken and coconut rice was a perfect mixture of sweet and spicy, and the chicken was so tender I could barely sink my fork into it without it falling apart. The menu offers lots of fish and rice dishes as well as ton of dishes that I’ve never heard of. The deli also has beer such as Corona and Heineken.
The deli was out of most of the appetizers such as plantains and meat pies when I visited, but the owners are very attentive and apparently buy all their products nearby at an African market on Highway 80. I’m glad Jackson has something so unique and off-the-beaten path. I can’t wait to take my guests from out-of-town to eat there.

The Disappearing Mississippi River Basin Model

(Thanks to Jessica Russell for this post)

Near the southwest Jackson/Clinton line, a 200-acre oddity of concrete and steel is quietly disappearing into the underbrush. It’s the Mississippi River Basin Model…or at least, what’s left of it. Which, to me, is still pretty impressive, and well worth seeing before nature takes over altogether. It’s a colossal relief map so large, you get to explore it on foot. You can’t see it all from one place, but you can climb the old tower, if you dare (it’s surprisingly sturdy, actually) for a somewhat better view. I for one never quite figured out which end was NOLA and which was St. Louis, but it was fun to guess.

Every part of the river basin’s topography, from the shallowest streams to the deepest channels, floodplains and levees, is sculpted in concrete to an exacting scale. In certain places, groups of metal pegs and mesh wire were deliberately placed along the river bottom. Two theories emerged in our party: simulated debris to mimic natural current interruptions, or an attempt to prevent the ruins from becoming a sweet stake park. The former turned out to be correct!

Growing up nearby, I had heard stories for years about this place, described as everything from a “defense experiment” to a “prisoner of war camp.” I went to Google to set the record straight – and found a tiny bit of truth behind both tales.

In its heyday, this bizarre construct was a state-of-the-art calculations device. The Army Corps of Engineers designed it specifically to help predict floods, droughts and other conditions throughout the river basin, which incidentally covers 41% of the continental U.S., and even parts of Canada. In 1943, German prisoners of war, handpicked for the project for their engineering backgrounds (and precise nature, no doubt), began the dirtwork. The Corps completed the project over the next several years, calling occasionally on Jackson-area contractors for additional concrete work. What I found most amusing in my research was a photo in this article < http://misspreservation.com/2010/02/10/before-and-after-mississippi-river-basin-model/ > of the place in its prime. Forget the drive-ins, folks. Apparently, “engineering types” once brought their dates here to impress them with their knowledge of waterways experiments! Smooth.

As you probably guessed, computer modeling replaced the need for physical structures like this. It was abandoned in 1993, but to see it today is still quite the experience. Nowhere else can you follow the twists and turns of the Mississippi and its winding labyrinth of streams and inlets as they carve their way throughout the Mississippi River Basin at the rate of one mile per step. It’s almost like being a giant.

For those who prefer to scan instead of read, these “fun facts” are just for you:

*   The largest “small-scale” river basin model ever built
*   An entire day on the river could be recreated in just over 5 minutes
*   One foot equals 2,000 feet in a horizontal direction (about a mile per footstep)-but only 100 feet in a vertical direction.
*   One gallon of water per minute flowing through the model equaled 1.5 million gallons in nature
*   It’s located off McRaven Road behind Butts Park (unfortunate name, I know)
*   It’s on the national historic register, but currently has no funding for preservation. See it while you still can!